May 2009 Archives

Here's another in what becomes a fairly common story when you're paying attention to open records issues:

An agency fights a court's decision that affirms certain documents are open under the law -- and spends a bunch of money doing it.

In this case at least there was no question whether the documents sought by the Gazette newspaper were public, given the wording of Colorado's open records law (at least according to the Gazette's lawyer). But a city-owned hospital put up a fight and ended up spending $80,000 in a losing effort.

The FBI has posted nearly 1,000 pages of new material on its investigations of outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.

The information came from the FBI's Dallas Field Office's investigative case records, which were uncovered in the course of preparing a historical exhibit in Dallas last year, according to the agency.

I always forget how young these two celebrity criminals were when they died -- 23 and 25, respectively. Last week was the May 23 anniversary of their deaths in an ambush near Gibsland, La., in 1934 after a manhunt.

A few weeks ago we wrote that we had asked York County for 911 time-response logs, and that the county had decided that logs were simply a list of times, without addresses or geographical locations of where units were headed -- thus making the information useless.

We appealed to the state's new Office of Open Records. Reporter Ted Czech, in his appeal, made the point that the legislature's intent in making time-response logs public was to allow people to assess first-responders' performance. Without addresses or at least a cross-street, Czech wrote, it's impossible to do that.

The open records office agreed (read the decision here under "Reading Room"), and made a couple of key points: One, that if a record is not specifically defined in the new open records law, the open records office has the authority to define it; and two, that the "legislative intent to expressly include time response logs as public information is to allow the public the ability to assess the efficiency of the emergency responders. ... The county has offered no support in the Act that permits them to withhold an address within a time response log, which they admit that they possess."

Sorry for back-to-back posts about open records issues from the region, but a co-worker here at the YDR alerted me to this after reading my previous entry.

In Luzerne County are under investigation for judges who sent kids to jail for kickbacks, a prison warden who spend big bucks at a strip club while at a conference, no-bid contracts, school boards selling jobs and ... oh goodness, at this point it might just be easier to say what the feds AREN'T investigating.

So anyway, on to the open records issue. The county government was, apparently, paying health care benefits for people who were not eligible for them. So, my former co-worker and desk mate, county reporter Michael P. Buffer (yes, the son the legend) submitted a Right-to-Know request to see who all is getting these benefits.

Well, the county turned him down, citing HIPPA (the Health Information Privacy Act). As any reporter will tell you, this is the standby for agencies who don't want to release records. They use it for an excuse for everything. I've had schools tell me they can't release student information because of HIPPA. And the law only applies to health care providers!

The newspaper is going to appeal. This will be an interesting case study. It really seems this should be a matter of public record -- how else can the public audit who is getting paid what?

In a recent ruling the state Office of Open records, a local tax agency agency was required to turn over job applications and resumes of its workers.

The back story on this is interesting. The Scranton Single Tax Office "lost" $2 million. An audit also found that the agency -- which exists solely to distribute taxes to local agencies -- had "accumulated" another $12 million. The office is being investigated.

As you can imagine, there's been some questions about the people running the show there. (I know, the video is a couple years old, but it is a real hoot.)

It's important for the community to look at those job applications and resumes to watchdog the employees -- especially in a place like Scranton and nearby Wilkes-Barre, where nepotism is almost a way of life.

(Interesting local side note: The reporter who filed this Right-to-Know appeal is Charles Schillinger, a former York Dispatch reporter. He now works for the Scranton Times-Tribune.)

After a York City School Board committee meeting a few weeks ago, education reporter Nickie Dobo was in a conversation with board members Hiawatha Powell and Beverly Atwater. They mentioned a trip to San Diego to attend a national conference.

Good reporters keep an eye on how government spends public money, so she got curious and got four of the five board members' expense receipts through the right-to-know law. Financial records of public institutions have always been public records, so, put in its simplest terms, people can keep track of where their tax money is going.

Nickie found out that board members spent almost $2,000 just on meals and cab fare. The total bill for the trip will rise significantly, because those expense reports did not include air fare, hotels or the conference registration fee. (Read the Daily Record/Sunday News' editorial on the spending here.)

The school board is now reviewing those expenses before deciding whether to approve them. To take a look at them yourself, visit our Full Disclosure open records site and scroll down to "Reading Room."

During discussion of the matter at Wednesday's board meeting, former board member Michael Breeland* said he was upset the board made the receipts public. It should have been handled internally, he said.

But the open records law exists to allow people to inspect such records as a way of holding public officials accountable, which is what occurred in this case. And the law acts as a way of ensuring that public officials do handle these issues. If the public has no oversight, it would be easy for a public body to ignore such issues.

*Breeland's first name was incorrect in an earlier version of this post. --SB

The federal government says it will publish a guide to the Freedom of Information Act in June.

 If you work at an agency that expects to order multiple copies, here are instructions on how to do that.

 If you're an individual who wants a copy, the feds say they'll publish it on the Department of Justice's Web site and you can get it there.

Paul Knepper, a York Township commissioner, continued his efforts tonight to publicize who has filed Right-to-Know requests with the township and the cost of the requests.

You might recall that Knepper has previously proposed listing that information on the township's Web site and in its newsletter. That proposal was tabled by a 4-1 vote in April.

However, tonight, Knepper brought a list of names and costs with him to the commissioners meeting and put them up on an overhead projector. He got the list through a Right-to-Know request that he filed.

Guy Beneventano, a lawyer with Nauman, Smith, Shissler & Hall in Harrisburg, is solicitor for Dauphin County and a couple other municipalities in the area. He wrote an article for a municipal government publication advising municipalities on what the new right-to-know law says about e-mails.

It's detailed and technical, so don't say I didn't warn you. I'll pull out here one of the most interesting parts.

 Beneventano says the office of open records' decision granting an appeal for e-mails from Worcester Township supervisors sent a message that other public officials should hear: "It potentially exposes to public review all e-mails on government matters between elected or appointed officials, regardless of whether the message is sent from or received at a home computer, or otherwise 'copied' to the solicitor."

He continues:
 
 "... recognize that Mollick significantly expands the scope of Right-to-Know for the following three reasons:

1. unless reversed on appeal, it signals OOR's intention to use the Sunshine law to construe (i.e., interpret) RTK, a practice which will inevitably lead to the broadest possible application of Right-to-Know's 'presumption' of openness;
2. sweeping, non-specific requests for documents (e-mail or otherwise) must be addressed, despite the burdensome, time-consuming nature of such requests; and
3. e-mail communications between board members must be made available to the public if the subject matter concerns agency business, regardless of whether such messages are sent from or received at home computers or personally-owned, hand-held devices (e.g., BlackBerries, iPhones)."

So, although e-mails by public officials concerning public business that are on private companies' servers are off-limits to the public, Beneventano is letting officials know that e-mails they send from home or from hand-held devices can be reviewed.

Iowa's governor says he'll release e-mails he sent from, or received on, private computers and servers that dealt with public business. He's responding to an open records request by The Associated Press.

York Township Commissioner Philip Briddell apparently has e-mails dealing with public business that are on a private server. The state's open records office ruled they are open to public inspection, but that it has no power to force Briddell or his employer to produce the e-mails.

That leaves it up to Briddell to release the e-mails. His initial response: It's not my problem.

It's fascinating (and encouraging) to see Pennsylvania residents using the new right-to-know law and trying to make it work for them.

Demetra Stamus of Carbon County tried something interesting when she appealed the county's denial of 911 audiotapes and other records related to a car crash in which her brother died.

As part of her appeal, she noted that the right-to-know law indicates that agencies can (my emphasis) release information that falls under an exemption if they believe the public interest in the material "outweighs the interest in non-disclosure."

She argued that sets up a mandatory test by an agency, as opposed to simply opening the door for an agency to release information that's exempt from the RTK law. And, she said, Carbon County didn't do the test.

She lost; the open records office "does not find this argument persuasive," it wrote in denying her appeal on May 1. It continued, "The OOR cannot compel the county to undertake a discretionary exercise."

So, agencies can apply that test, but they don't have to (my emphasis again). It's tough to argue that agencies should be mandated to do the test every time they issue a denial; but it also is hard to fathom that any agency would voluntarily give up information that it didn't have to (they seem to work hard enough as it is to try to keep public information private).

You would like to think, however, that if the public benefit outweighed the need to keep information private, an agency would release the information. Guess we'll have to just wait and see.

Remember the flap when the state open records office's director said the Gov. Rendell administration was "going out of its way to block access to public records"?

Well, WHTM-27 is reporting this evening that Mutchler recently had a face-to-face meeting with Rendell. He he told her there had been "resistance from our folks and I think that resistance was wrong. I told her that. I told our folks that."

Mutchler said she will hold regular meeting with Rendell's office and with state agencies. "This governor is pro open government," Mutchler said.

Sounds like a truce. Think it'll last?

*(9/6/09: UPDATE: see below for note on court costs, fines, etc.)

I was e-mailing back and forth with a reader who wanted to know the trial date for a particular criminal case and asked was there a way he could keep up with it.

Here it is, for anyone who wants to track a criminal court case. This is public information available to anyone. I don't know how quickly this information is updated -- for example, whether it's same-day -- but my impression is it's generally up to date:

 Go to this link: http://ujsportal.pacourts.us/

 In the upper left, hover your cursor over 'E-Services'

 Then hover over 'Public Web Docket Sheets'

 Click on 'Court of Common Pleas'

 Scroll down to the box labeled 'Search Type'

 On the drop-down menu, click on 'Participant name'

 Enter the last name, first name and then, in the 'County' box, choose York

 Click 'Search'

 When the search results come back, hover over the symbol of a magnifying glass and a
piece of paper

 The 'court summary' is what it says, just a quick look at where the case stands.

 The 'docket sheet' has more info, including a chronological listing of various actions taken in the case.
 *The court costs, fines, etc. are usually the last pages in the file. So if you're looking for how much someone owes, scroll to the bottom and check there first.

I came across a couple of things last week about how much open-records laws cost -- both an agency that has to produce records, and sometimes the person requesting records.

People have raised the issue as a problem on both ends of the law. Some say public agencies (read: taxpayers) shouldn't have to pay for people to be "nosy;" others say Pennsylvania's new right-to-know law might discourage people from requesting records because they might have to pay up if an agency takes them to court.

York Daily Record/Sunday News staffer Sean Adkins writes in Sunday's paper that York Township spent $5,700 searching computer records for a township supervisor's e-mails. That's a lot of money, and the search didn't turn up much. The question is, how would you know what's there if you don't ask? And in this case, the requester told the township to stop searching before it spent more money.

Across the U.S., two cases highlighted each side of the issue: